I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Book Review: "The Prize" by Dale Russakoff

Dale Russakoff’s The
Prize – a chronicle of the education “reform” efforts in Newark, NJ that
were supposed to be a model for the nation -- is as remarkable for what it doesn’t report as it is as for what it
does.

Russakoff, formerly a reporter for the Washington Post, tells the story of the effort to remake Newark’s
schools following a highly publicized donation in 2011 from Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg. The $100 million gift (which was nearly doubled by matching grants)
provides a catalyst for Newark’s Mayor, Cory Booker, and New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie to implement a series of changes in the city that are often
referred to as “corporate education reform”: charter school expansion, teacher
merit pay, and the closing or reconstitution of “failing” schools.

This trio, aided by NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf,
take advantage of Newark’s status as a state-operated district to impose their
agenda on the city’s schools. Confident that parental “choice” and promises of
transformation will be enough to generate local support for their plans, they
recruit a small army of consultants, pollsters, and advisers, all happy to get
their share of Zuckerberg’s money.

While Russkoff does a good job of documenting the political
plays and backroom deals that follow from the donation, she does miss a few
critical details. Cerf, for example, had led a consulting firm, Global
Education Advisors, just prior to his appointment as commissioner by Christie.
GEA was the firm that drafted the initial plan for transforming Newark into a
“portfolio” district of both charter and district schools.

At first, Cerf claimed that he was only minimally involved
in drafting the blueprint; later, when confronted by the Star-Ledger (Newark’s hometown
newspaper), he changed his story and admitted he had much more say than he
originally let on. The potential conflict of interest, along with Cerf’s
changing story, instantly called into question the credibility of GEA’s plan.

Russakoff also fails to note that Newark already had a
school reform plan in place: the Global
Village, designed by prominent education scholar and activist Pedro
Noguera. Based in part on the Harlem Children’s Zone, the plan called for
increased community support and wrap-around services for students. Zuckerberg’s
gift, however, changed the agenda in Newark, and the Global Village died on the
vine.

As Russakoff’s book progresses, two additional figures dominate
the story. Ras Baraka – a city councilman, a high school principal, and
eventually Booker’s replacement as mayor – emerges as the primary critic of the
reforms. Baraka’s election becomes a de
facto referendum on local control of the schools, which had been under
state control for two decades. His decisive victory is widely seen as a
rejection by the local community of the Booker-Christie-Zuckerberg plans.

The other prominent player is Cami Anderson, recruited by
Booker and Christie to serve as the State Superintendent. A bureaucrat with a
reformer pedigree (Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, Joel Klein’s
NYC-DOE), Anderson almost immediately alienates both the city’s leadership and
the families whose students attend the public schools. Her autocratic style,
tin ear, and penchant for disruption doom any chances of the community rallying
around her plans.

For those of us who closely follow New Jersey education
policy, the story of Anderson’s subsequent travails is painfully familiar.
Russakoff does a fine job documenting Anderson’s many missteps; however, I
found her portrayal of Anderson as an early critic of charter school expansion
awfully hard to swallow.

The fact is that Anderson
introduced her controversial “One Newark” universal enrollment system under
the premise that children should have access to “great schools,” no matter if
they were district or charter. It was only after her “Renew Schools” failed to
produce the results she promised that she used charter schools as
an excuse, claiming they were creaming off the most motivated students.

Russakoff’s credulous acceptance of Anderson’s reluctance to
expand charters actually betrays a larger problem with her book. The story is
largely told through the interactions of the power players, interspersed with
reports from two Newark schools: BRICK Avon, a district school, and SPARK
Academy, an elementary school that is part of the national KIPP charter network.

The stories from BRICK are the most compelling part of The Prize. Russakoff artfully details
the struggles of the staff to overcome the effects of poverty on their
students. There are small triumphs, but often followed by crushing setbacks.
The story of Alif Beyah is particularly poignant: a standout basketball player
who struggles in middle school, he makes great strides thanks to a relentless
teacher, only to backslide when he enters high school.

These portraits, however, are used to reinforce frameworks
that reflect the views of the book’s powerful players – frameworks that Russakoff
herself largely accepts with little challenge.

Take school budgets: repeatedly, Russakoff states that
charter schools are able to put more of their funds into the classroom, as
opposed to the district schools, which are hampered by a large central
bureaucracy. But data from the state’s Department of Education directly
contradicts this claim.

In my
analysis of spending figures from 2012-13, I found district schools actually
spend about one thousand dollars more
on classroom instruction than their charter school neighbors. Further, Newark
Public Schools only spent $1,757 per pupil on administration, compared to an
average of $3,552 for the charters. That’s quite a bit of money that is not
going into the classroom. In addition, NPS spends nearly $4,000 dollars more on
student support services*, which includes guidance counselors, social workers,
and child study teams.

This actually makes sense: charter schools create redundancies in a system like
Newark, as every charter is essentially its own district, requiring its own
staff to manage its administrative needs. If we truly care about getting funds
into the classroom, why create overlapping administrative systems that almost
certainly will not be able to leverage economies of scale?

Charters in large networks like KIPP often collect sizable private
donations to help with these costs, which calls into question any claims of
budgetary efficiency. They also don’t have to spend as much as NPS per child on
support services because they educate fewer students with special education
needs.

Russakoff acknowledges these differences in student
populations; however, she doesn’t dig deep into the question of how they might
impact charter schools’ spending patterns, and whether those schools are truly more
efficient with their budgets. She also bases her analysis of charter spending
almost entirely on KIPP, even though its schools only educate about 20 percent
of the students enrolled in Newark charters.

In fact, the small, local charters that control the majority
of the charter school market are barely mentioned throughout The Prize. KIPP is well-known for
running a powerhouse public relations department; it appears that Russakoff
relied heavily on them while ignoring the largest part of Newark’s charter
sector.

Another bit of received wisdom Russakoff doesn’t challenge
is that Newark, like other urban districts, is plagued by unusually high
numbers of ineffective teachers. Tenure and seniority rights keep these
teachers in their jobs; if they could be removed, the district would see a rise
in student achievement.

Certainly, there is evidence that teachers in urban schools
with high numbers of disadvantaged children are less likely
to be highly-qualified. But affluent districts with high-performing schools
have faculties with tenure and seniority rights; why are their schools
“successful” if they are hindered by the same teacher protections?

Further, where is any evidence that the teachers who would
replace older “ineffective” teachers would be any better? Russakoff, like the lead
players in her story, seems to believe that the ability to hire and fire
teachers at will is one of the greatest advantages charters have over district
schools because plenty of better new candidates would come into the system,
even without any changes in working conditions or pay.

Yet Newark’s charter teachers, according to my analysis of
NJDOE data, are more likely to be white and are far less experienced than their
NPS colleagues. Research tells us that racial
alignment of teachers and students can play a positive role in student
achievement; we also know that experience
matters, as teachers on average grow in effectiveness well into their
second decade.

In shouldn’t surprise anyone then that, according to an analysis
I wrote this past year, Newark’s “Renew” schools saw a sharp drop in growth
measures after their first year. These schools reconstituted their staffs,
leading to faculties with fewer black and fewer experienced teachers. If tenure
and seniority are such an impediment, why didn’t the Renew schools succeed?

The question challenges a foundational belief of
“reformers”: that talent, more than systems reform and funding adequacy, is
what leads to success. Zuckerberg himself chose Newark as the place for his
experiment largely because he was impressed with Booker and Christie; like the
managers he recruits for Facebook, they were the “great leaders” he was
prepared to “invest” in.

All of the power players in The Prize view teachers in the same way: getting “great” ones into
Newark’s schools is the key to meaningful education reform. But no one,
including Russakoff, ever stops to ask if there is any more than anecdotal
evidence that Newark’s teachers are inordinately lousy given the amount the
state is willing to spend on its school system.

Give Russakoff credit for documenting how the political
ambitions, ideological predilections, and, at times, sheer incompetence of the
lead players in her tale kept them from meeting their goals. It’s a shame,
however, that Russakoff didn’t go further and question some of the core
orthodoxies of the reform movement.

Had she taken this next step, The Prize could have been more than it is now: a well-written tale
of politics with some compelling anecdotes of urban education included.
Russakoff had the chance to use this story to break down some of the
fundamental tenets of corporate-style education reform; instead, she embraces
them with little to no challenge.

Perhaps telling the behind-the-scenes story and unpacking
the premises of the reformers is too much to ask from one book. But tales of
power, while captivating, aren’t what we need right now; we’d benefit much more
from an in-depth analysis of how “reform” is proceeding in our cities.

While a worthy read, The
Prize isn’t that analysis.

* Many charter schools in New Jersey report no spending on
support services. It is possible they list spending for these services in other
line items; therefore, to be as fair as possible, I calculated per pupil for
all charters, and then again but only for those that report any spending on
support.

5 comments:

Quite so. I've always thought that the Newark "reform" efforts showed just why corporate donations will never solve public school programs. For one, a businessman would never take the $100 million and just spread it evenly over the entire community. He would pick the programs that are working and invest in those. Well, this won't work in a public program. Each citizen has to be treated equally. Secondly, there simply is not enough money, even from Mr Z and the like. Public program budgets are in the billions, not millions. No one has that kind of money. Public programs are not just some kind of failing private program; there is a valid reason for them. They solve problems that private programs cannot touch, such as crimes, fires, communicable diseases. These problems have a "public" aspect to them; the results of one person's activity affects others. There is no private solution to them; you have to involve everyone. Education is one of those progams.

Global Education Advisors, just prior to his appointment as commissioner by Christie. GEA was the firm that drafted the initial plan for transforming Newark into a “portfolio” district of both charter and district schools.The Investment Banking School

Thanks for your extremely thorough review. This book kind of gets what I call "squatter's rights". There simply isn't that many even attempting to be balanced accounts of the reform movement aimed at nonacademic audiences as opposed to PR from either side that Russakoff's book gets a boost for just being willing to try. I appreciate your challenges to her data. I'd add another criticism. There's no real bibliography and it's lightly footnoted. Russakoff is a good reporter who did some good reporting of the power players, but she's not really a data driven education researcher who can offer independent critique for a popular audience. Do you have any other recommendations for books that similarly attempt to drive a middle ground between reformers and the Ravitch wing that address some of the criticisms you mention?